Market Építő Zrt. has completed the construction of a new parcel distribution centre in Budapest for DPD Hungária Kft. The facility has doubled the logistics company’s domestic sorting capacity.

Total demand on the Budapest industrial/logistics market amounted to 460,000 sqm in Q1-Q3 2020. The vacancy rate at the end of Q3 2020 stood at 2.3% following a 0.21 pps decline y-o-y. The Budapest Research Forum published its quarterly industrial/logistics market analysis

The share of internet sales has returned to near pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, Polish customers are more willing than before to turn to convenience shopping in smaller retail formats. JLL summarised conditions on Poland's retail market at the end of Q3 2020.

The sixth and last building of the Váci Greens office complex in Budapest, the 23,445 sqm Building “E”, has received the final occupancy permit. With this, Atenor’s flagship project in Budapest is completed.

Reuters reports that Magyar Telekom (Deutsche Telekom’s Hungarian unit), which moved into its newly constructed Budapest HQ in Q3 2018 and signed a 15-year lease agreement for 58,000 sqm, is considering subletting some of its office space.

It’s at last becoming possible to assess the consequences for Croatia’s construction sector of the country’s July 2020 elections. Jockeying for governmental positions, COVID-19- and tourism-season-related priorities and other pressing matters prevented the new Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led government from moving on its larger agenda until recently. Now, though, the political picture, and the impact of the elections on Croatia’s construction sector, is getting clearer, according to a report by the Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association.

Belgian real estate developer Speedwell is rapidly expanding in Romania with ongoing projects in Bucharest, Timisoara and Cluj-Napoca. Didier Balcaen, Founder and CEO of the company who will be a speaker at our upcoming SEE Property Forum 2020 in Bucharest, talked to us about Speedwell’s ongoing projects and shared his vision for handling the changes that COVID-19 has brought on the market.

VÚB banka and UniCredit Bank have provided developer J&T Real Estate with a €105 million syndicated loan for the construction of Eurovea’s extended residential part, which will include approximately 500 apartments in Eurovea Tower - Slovakia’s very first skyscraper - and waterfront residences (Eurovea Riverside). This loan is one of the largest granted for a Slovak development project in recent years. Dentons prepared the contract documentation.

Panattoni has started construction work on a factory for Danfoss Poland in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. The development with an area of 12,000 sqm will be equipped with several ecologically friendly systems that will make the building highly energy-efficient and also improve the conditions for the workforce of around 400 people. The building is scheduled to be completed in November 2021. It will be used as a place to manufacture components for the RAC (Refrigeration & Air Conditioning) business division.

Data centres are becoming an important segment of commercial real estate and the COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be an impulse for its accelerated growth. There are currently 115 data centres in Poland, of which the highest number is located in Warsaw (35), Katowice and Kraków (13 each). Axi Immo anticipates the market to develop further, especially following the decision by IT giants Google and Microsoft to add Warsaw to their list of global cloud regions, with a pledged investment of $2 billion and $1 billion respectively over the coming years. Axi Immo experts have prepared a report on the Polish data centre market, its requirements and specific features.